Chapter 1

Introduction

The aim of this book is to argue that the mind-bodyjprobtem is not — just a local problem, having to do with the relation between mind, brain, and behavior in living animal organisms, but that it invades our understanding of the entire cosmos and its history. The physical sciences and evolutionary biology cannot be kept insulated from it, and I believe a true appreciation of the difficulty of the problem must eventually change our conception of the place of the physical £} sciences in describing the natural order. One of the legitimate tasks of philosophy is to investigate the limits of even the best developed and most successful forms of con­ temporary scientific knowledge. It maybe frustrating to acknowledge, but we are simply at the point in the history of human thought at ^\fi4^A/ which we find ourselves, and our successors will make discoveries and develop forms of understanding of which we have not dreamt. Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellec­ tual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to under­ stand the universe as a whole. Pointing out their limits is a philo- <&£-• sophical task, whoever engages in it, rather than part of the internal pursuit of science—though we can hope that if the limits are recog­ nized, that may eventually lead to the discovery of new forms of ; scientific understanding. Scientists are well aware of how much they 1 Sf MIND AND COSMOS INTRODUCTION '/f

don't know, but this is a different kind of problem—not just of evidence favors some form of neutral monism over the traditional acknowledging the limits of what is actually understood but of alternatives of materialism, idealism, and dualism. What I would trying to recognize what can and cannot in principle be understood like to do is to explore the possibilities that are compatible with by certain existing methods. what we know—in particular what we know about how mind and My target is a comprehensive, speculative world picture that is everything connected with it depends on the appearance and devel­ reached by extrapolation from some of the discoveries of biology, opment of living organisms, as a result of the universe's physical, chemistry, and physics—a particular naturalistic Weltanschauung chemical, and then biological evolution. I will contend that these that postulates a hierarchical relation among the subjects of those processes must be reconceived in light of what they have produced, sciences, and the completeness in principle of an explanation of if psychophysical reductionism is false. 0* everything in the universe through their unification. Such a world •I The argument from the failure of psychophysical reductionism ^4 u view is not a necessary condition of the practice of any of those is a philosophical one, but I believe there are independent empir­ < A sciences, and its acceptance or nonacceptance would have no effect •»' ical reasons to be skeptical about the truth of reductionism in on most scientific research. For all I know, most practicing scientists biology. Physico-chemical reductionism in biology is the orthodox may have no opinion about the overarching cosmological questions view, and any resistance to it is regarded as not only scientifically to which this materialist reductionism provides an answer. Their I but politically incorrect. But for a long time I have found the mate­ detailed research and substantive findings do not in general depend Wf rialist account of how we and our fellow organisms came to exist on or imply either that or any other answer to such questions. hard to believe, including the standard version of how the evolu­ But among the scientists and philosophers who do express views tionary process works. The more details we learn about the chemi­ 4, about the natural order as a whole, reductive materialism is widely cal basis of life and the intricacy of the genetic code, the more assumed to be the only serious possibility.1 unbelievable the standard historical account becomes.2 This is just -.•;• The starting point for the argument is the failure of psychophys­ the opinion of a layman who reads widely in the literature that ical reductionism, a position in the philosophy of mind that is largely explains contemporary science to the nonspecialist. Perhaps that motivated by the hope of showing how the physical sciences could literature presents the situation with a simplicity and confidence in principle provide a theory of everything. If that hope is unrealiz­ that does not reflect the most sophisticated scientific thought in able, the question arises whether any other more or less unified these areas. But it seems to me that, as it is usually presented, the understanding could take in the entire cosmos as we know it. Among current orthodoxy about the cosmic order is the product of govern­ the traditional candidates for comprehensive understanding of the ing assumptions that are unsupported, and that it flies in the face of C/f(' relation of mind to the physical world, I believe the weight of common sense.

2. See Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Uni­ i. For a clear statement, see Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Pantheon verse without Design (New York: Norton, 1986), for a canonical exposition, which seems to Books, 1992), chapter 3. convince practically everyone. MIND AND COSMOS INTRODUCTION

, I would like to defend the untutored reaction of incredulity to long historical period in the distant past, the available evidence is very the reductionist neo-Darwinian account of the origin and evolution indirect, and general assumptions have to play an important part. My 3 of life. It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is skepticism is not based on religious belief, or on a belief in any definite K the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the alternative. It is just a belief that the available scientific evidence, in mechanism of natural selection. We are expected to abandon this spite of the consensus of scientific opinion, does not in this matter ra­ naive response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical tionally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense. explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for That is especially true with regard to the origin of life. wf explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my The world is an astonishing place, and the idea that we have in ,£v knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible our possession the basic tools needed to understand it is no more f probability of being true. There are two questions. First, given what credible now than it was in Aristotle's day. That it has produced you, is known about the chemical basis of biology and genetics, what is and me, and the rest of us is the most astonishing thing about it. If the likelihood that self-reproducing life forms should have come contemporary research in molecular biology leaves open the possi­ into existence spontaneously on the early earth, solely through the bility of legitimate doubts about a fully mechanistic account of the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry? The second ques­ origin and evolution of life, dependent only on the laws of chemis­ tion is about the sources of variation in the evolutionary process try and physics, this can combine with the failure of psychophysical that was set in motion once life began: In the available geological reductionism to suggest that principles of a different kind are also time since the first life forms appeared on earth, what is the likeli­ at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order hood that, as a result of physical accident, a sequence of viable that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. genetic mutations should have occurred that was sufficient to permit I realize that such doubts will strike many people as outrageous, but natural selection to produce the organisms that actually exist? that is because almost everyone in our secular culture has been There is much more uncertainty in the scientific community about browbeaten into regarding the reductive research program as sacro­ the first question than about the second. Many people think it will be sanct, on the ground that anything else would not be science. very difficult to come up with a reductionist explanation of the origin My project has the familiar form of trying to meet a set of condi­ of life, but most people have no doubt that accidental genetic varia­ tions that seem jointly impossible. In addition to antireductionism, tion is enough to support the actual history of evolution by natural two further constraints are important: first, an assumption that selection, once reproducing organisms have come into existence. certain things are so remarkable that they have to be explained as non- However, since the questions concern highly specific events over a accidental if we are to pretend to a real understanding of the world; second, the ideal of discovering a single natural order that unifies 3. For an illuminating account of Darwin's own views about the most basic forms of explana­ everything on the basis of a set of common elements and principles— tion, see Elliott Sober, "Darwin's Discussions of God," in Did Darwin Write the "Origin" Backwards!: Philosophical Essays on Darwin's Theory (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, an ideal toward which the inevitably very incomplete forms of our 1011), 111-18. actual understanding should nevertheless aspire. Cartesian dualism MIND AND COSMOS INTRODUCTION

rejects this second aspiration, and the reductive programs of both As I have said, doubts about the reductionist account of life go materialism and idealism are failed attempts to realize it. The uni­ against the dominant scientific consensus, but that consensus faces fying conception is also incompatible with the kind of theism that problems of probability that I believe are not taken seriously explains certain features of the natural world by divine intervention, enough, both with respect to the evolution of life forms through which is not part of the natural order. accidental mutation and natural selection and with respect to the The great advances in the physical and biological sciences were formation from dead matter of physical systems capable of such made possible by excluding the mind from the physical world. This evolution. The more we learn about the intricacy of the genetic has permitted a quantitative understanding of that world, expressed code and its control of the chemical processes of life, the harder *y in timeless, mathematically formulated physical laws. But at some those problems seem. point it will be necessary to make a new start on a more comprehen­ m Again: with regard to evolution, the process of natural selection J sive understanding that includes the mind. It seems inevitable that cannot account for the actual history without an adequate supply of such an understanding will have a historical dimension as well as / viable mutations, and I believe it remains an open question whether a timeless one. The idea that historical understanding is part of this could have been provided in geological time merely as a result of science has become familiar through the transformation of biology chemical accident, without the operation of some other factors de­ by evolutionary theory. But more recently, with the acceptance of termining and restricting the forms of genetic variation. It is no longer the big bang, cosmology has also become a historical science. Mind, legitimate simply to imagine a sequence of gradually evolving pheno- as a development of life, must be included as the most recent stage types, as if their appearance through mutations in the DNA were un- of this long cosmological history, and its appearance, I believe, casts problematic—as Richard Dawkins does for the evolution of the eye.4 its shadow back over the entire process and the constituents and With regard to the origin of life, the problem is much harder, since principles on which the process depends. The question is whether we can integrate this perspective with 4. See Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 77-86. Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini argue in the first part of their book What Darwin Got Wrong (New York: Farrar, Straus & that of the physical sciences as they have been developed for a mind- Giroux, 2010) that Darwinian evolutionary theory assigns much too much of the explana­ less universe. The understanding of mind cannot be contained tory burden for the functional character of organisms to the external influence of natural selection, and not enough to the sources of genetic variation. This point is independent of within the personal point of view, since mind is the product of a their attack on the alleged intentionality of the idea of natural selection in the second part of partly physical process; but by the same token, the separateness of the book—which seems to me, as to others, to be based on a misinterpretation. There are also more mainstream figures who insist that the evidence calls for a more re­ physical science, and its claim to completeness, has to end in the stricted account of the sources of variation in the genetic material. Marc W. Kirschner and long run. And that poses the question: To what extent will the John C. Gerhart, in The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1005), suggest that genetic variation is biased to facilitate evolu­ reductive form that is so central to contemporary physical science tionary change, though they do not imply that this calls for a revision of the larger reduc­ survive this transformation? If physics and chemistry cannot fully tionist conception of nature. Stuart Kauffman suggests in several books that variation is not due to chance, and that principles of spontaneous self-organization play a more important account for life and consciousness, how will their immense body of role than natural selection in evolutionary history. See At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); truth be combined with other elements in an expanded conception Investigations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Reinventing the Sacred: A New of the natural order that can accommodate those things? View of Science, Reason, andReligion (New York: Basic Books, 2008). MIND AND COSMOS INTRODUCTION

the option of natural selection as an explanation is not available. And Those who have seriously criticized these arguments have the coming into existence of the genetic code—an arbitrary mapping certainly shown that there are ways to resist the design conclu­ of nucleotide sequences into amino acids, together with mechanisms sion; but the general force of the negative part of the intelligent that can read the code and carry out its instructions—seems particu­ design position—skepticism about the likelihood of the ortho­ larly resistant to being revealed as probable given physical law alone.5 dox reductive view, given the available evidence—does not ap­ In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by pear to me to have been destroyed in these exchanges.9 At least, criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture from a very dif­ the question should be regarded as open. To anyone interested ferent direction: the attack on Darwinism mounted in recent years in the basis of this judgment, I can only recommend a careful from a religious perspective by the defenders of intelligent design. reading of some of the leading advocates on both sides of the Even though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer are issue—with special attention to what has been established by motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical the critics of intelligent design. Whatever one may think about arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and the possibility of a designer, the prevailing doctrine—that the its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chem­ appearance of life from dead matter and its evolution through istry are of great interest in themselves.6 Another skeptic, David accidental mutation and natural selection to its present forms has

5. Indeed there may be something deeply confused about the request for such an explana­ he assumes this is a task for chemistry, he does say (287), "A real potential exists that cur­ tion—for a reason pointed out by Roger White, which I discuss in chapter 4. rent theory will never solve the problem at hand, keeping open the possibility for a true 6. See Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: revolution in the related and surrounding sciences." Of course he doesn't mean intelligent Simon & Schuster, 1996); Behe, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism design. (New York: Free Press, 2007); Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence A problem with the most salient current research is that the synthesis of individual com­ for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperOne, 2009). ponents of the genetic material is so heavily controlled and guided by the experimenters 7. See David Berlinski, "On the Origins of Life," Commentary, February 2006, reprinted in that it provides little evidence that the process could have occurred without intelligent Berlinski, The Deniable Darwin, and Other Essays (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2009). guidance. And the crucial question of how these components could have combined into an See also Brian Goodwin, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity information-rich coded sequence is left unaddressed. (New York: Scribner's, 1994). 9. The literature is extensive. See for example Kenneth R. Miller, Finding Darwin's God: A 8. There are also criticisms of current theories from those who nevertheless expect a reduc­ Scientist's Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution (New York: Cliff Street, tive solution; for example Robert Shapiro, Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life 1999); Philip Kitcher, Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith (New on Earth (New York: Summit Books, 1986); Shapiro, "A Simpler Origin for Life," Scientific York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Elliott Sober, Evidence and Evolution: The Logic American, February 12, 2007. A very clear explanation of multiple aspects of current Behind the Science (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008); for a sample of research into the origin of life and the possibility of extraterrestrial life is Steven Benner, both sides of the debate, see Neil A. Manson, ed., God and Design: The Teleological Argument Life, the Universe and the Scientific Method (Gainesville, FL: FfAME Press, 2008). Though andModern Science (NewYork: Routledge, 2003). MIND AND COSMOS

I confess to an ungrounded assumption of my own, in not finding Chapter 2 it possible to regard the design alternative as a real option. I lack the sensus divinitatis that enables—indeed compels—so many people to see in the world the expression of divine purpose as naturally as they Antireductionism and see in a smiling face the expression of human feeling.10 So my specu­ lations about an alternative to physics as a theory of everything do the Natural Order not invoke a transcendent being but tend toward complications to the immanent character of the natural order. That would also be a more unifying explanation than the design hypothesis. I disagree with the defenders of intelligent design in their assumption, one which they share with their opponents, that the only naturalistic alternative is a reductionist theory based on physical laws of the type with which we are familiar. Nevertheless, I believe the defenders of The conflict between scientific naturalism and various forms of an­ intelligent design deserve our gratitude for challenging a scientific tireductionism is a staple of recent philosophy. On one side there is world view that owes some of the passion displayed by its adherents the hope that everything can be accounted for at the most basic precisely to the fact that it is thought to liberate us from religion. level by the physical sciences, extended to include biology.1 On the That world view is ripe for displacement, in spite of the great other side there are doubts about whether the reality of such features achievements of reductive materialism, which will presumably con­ of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, purpose, tinue for a long time to be our main source for concrete under­ thought, and value can be accommodated in a universe consisting at standing and control of the world around us. To argue, as I will, that the most basic level only of physical facts—facts, however sophisti­ there is a lot it can't explain is not to offer an alternative. But the cated, of the kind revealed by the physical sciences. recognition of those limits is a precondition of looking for alterna­ I will use the terms "materialism" or "materialist naturalism" to tives, or at least of being open to their possibility. And it may mean refer to one side of this conflict and "antireductionism" to refer to the that some directions of pursuit of the materialist form of explana­ other side, even though the terms are rather rough. The attempts to tion will come to be seen as dead ends. If the appearance of con­ defend the materialist world picture as a potentially complete scious organisms in the world is due to principles of development account of what there is take many forms, and not all of them involve that are not derived from the timeless laws of physics, that maybe reduction in the ordinary sense, such as the analysis of mental concepts a reason for pessimism about purely chemical explanations of the in behavioral terms or the scientific identification of mental states with origin of life as well. brain states. Many materialist naturalists would not describe their view

10.1 am not just unreceptive but strongly averse to the idea, as I have said elsewhere. 1. This program has been pursued with dedication in the writings of Daniel Dennett. /rtHMtfUW' /M% •* »'"r* ,m MIND AND COSMOS ANTIREDUCTIONISM AND THE NATURAL ORDER

as reductionist. But to those who doubt the adequacy of such a world phenomena that are not physically reducible. So if mind is a product view, the different attempts to accommodate within it mind and re­ of biological evolution—if organisms with mental life are not mirac­ lated phenomena all appear as attempts to reduce the true extent of ulous anomalies but an integral part of nature—then biology cannot J reality to a common basis that is not rich enough for the purpose. be a purely physical science. The possibility opens up of a pervasive Hence the resistance can be brought together as antireductionism. conception of the natural order very different from materialism— The tendency of these antireductionist doubts is usually negative. one that makes mind central, rather than a side effect of physical law. The conclusion they invite is that there are some things that the phys­ It seems clear that the conclusion of antireductionist arguments ical sciences alone cannot fully account for. Other forms of under­ against materialism cannot remain purely negative forever. Even if standing may be needed, or perhaps there is more to reality than the dominance of materialist naturalism is nearing its end, we need even the most fully developed physics can describe. If reduction some idea of what might replace it. One of the things that drive the fails in some respect, this reveals a limit to the reach of the physical various reductionist programs about mind, value, and meaning, in sciences, which must therefore be supplemented by something else spite of their inherent implausibility, is the lack of any comprehen­ to account for the missing elements. But the situation may be more sive alternative. It can seem that the only way to accept the argu­ serious than that. If one doubts the reducibility of the mental to the ments against reduction is by adding peculiar extra ingredients like physical, and likewise of all those other things that go with the men­ qualia, meanings, intentions, values, reasons, beliefs, and desires to X3 tal, such as value and meaning, then there is some reason to doubt the otherwise magnificently unified mathematical order of the phys­ that a reductive materialism can apply even in biology, and therefore ical universe. But this does not answer to the desire for a general ^ , reason to doubt that materialism can give an adequate account even understanding of how things fit together. A genuin:nuine alternative to f^J^ of the physical world. I want to explore the case for this breakdown, the reductionist program would require an account of how mind and to consider whether anything positive by way of a world view is and everything that goes with it is inherent in the universe. imaginable in the wake of it. I am just turning a familiar argument on its head in order to chal­ We and other creatures with mental lives are organisms, and lenge the premises. Materialism requires reductionism; therefore the our mental capacities apparently depend on our physical constitu­ failure of reductionism requires an alternative to materialism. My tion. So what explains the existence of organisms like us must also aim is not so much to argue against reductionism as to investigate the explain the existence of mind. But if the mental is not itself merely consequences of rejecting it—to present the problem rather than to physical, it cannot be fully explained by physical science. And then, propose a solution. Materialist naturalism leads to reductionist am­ as I shall argue, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that those bitions because it seems unacceptable to deny the reality of all those J aspects of our physical constitution that bring with them the mental familiar things that are not at first glance physical. But if no plausible cannot be fully explained by physical science either. If evolutionary reduction is available, and if denying reality to the mental continues to biology is a physical theory—as it is generally taken to be—then it be unacceptable, that suggests that the original premise, materialist cannot account for the appearance of consciousness and of other naturalism, is false, and not just around the edges. Perhaps the natural MIND AND COSMOS ANTIREDUCTIONISM AND THE NATURAL ORDER

order is not exclusively physical; or perhaps, in the worst case, there is eventually reach a point where there is nothing more to be said, no comprehensive natural order in which everything hangs to­ except "This is just how things are." gether—only disconnected forms of understanding. But whatever I am not disposed to see the success of science in this way. It maybe the result, we must start out from a larger conception of what seems to me that one cannot really understand the scientific world has to be understood in order to make sense of the natural world. view unless one assumes that the intelligibility of the world, as described by the laws that science has uncovered, is itself part of the deepest explanation of why things are as they are. So when we prefer one explanation of the same data to another because it is simpler and makes fewer arbitrary assumptions, that is not just an aesthetic ^ My guiding conviction is that mind is not just an afterthought or an preference: it is because we think the explanation that gives greater Of* accident or an add-on, but a basic aspect of nature. Quite apart from understanding is more likely to be true, just for that reason. antireductionist arguments in the philosophy of mind, there is inde­ This assumption is a form of the principle of sufficient reason— ?< pendent support for the step to such an enlarged conception of re­ that everything about the world can at some level be understood, ality in one of the background conditions of science. Science is and that if many things, even the most universal, initially seem arbi­ driven by the assumption that the world is intelligible. That is, the trary, that is because there are further things we do not know, which world in which we find ourselves, and about which experience gives explain why they are not arbitrary after all. The view that rational intelligibility is at the root of the natural us some information, can be not only described but understood. sP- J That assumption is behind every pursuit of knowledge, including order makes me, in a broad sense, an idealist—not a subjective ide­ pursuits that end in illusion. In the natural sciences as they have alist, since it doesn't amount to the claim that all reality is ultimately developed since the seventeenth century, the assumption of intelligi­ appearance—but an objective idealist in the tradition of Plato and P*' bility has led to extraordinary discoveries, confirmed by prediction perhaps also of certain post-Kantians, such as Schelling and Hegel, and experiment, of a hidden natural order that cannot be observed by who are usually called absolute idealists. I suspect that there must be. human perception alone. Without the assumption of an intelligible a strain of this kind of idealism in every theoretical scientist: pure *f? V underlying order, which long antedates the scientific revolution, empiricism is not enough. jc those discoveries could not have been made. The intelligibility of the world is no accident. Mind, in this view, What explains this order? One answer would be that nothing is doubly related to the natural order. Nature is such as to give rise to does: explanation comes to an end with the order itself, which conscious beings with minds; and it is such as to be comprehensible fyfrg/ < the assumption of intelligibility has merely enabled us to uncover. to such beings. Ultimately, therefore, such beings should be compre- ^v,. Perhaps one level of order can be explained in terms of a still deeper hensible to themselves. And these are fundamental features of the level—as has happened repeatedly in the history of science. But in universe, not byproducts of contingent developments whose true the end, on this view of the matter, understanding of the world will explanation is given in terms that do not make reference to mind.

16 u*vvr&i+tJ -tf^swr A 's*S ca^M^in hw\ MIND AND COSMOS ANTIREDUCTIONISM AND THE NATURAL ORDER

grasp the natural order in its full manifestation because it is too complex, and we therefore need more specialized forms of under­ The largest question within which all natural science is embedded is standing for practical purposes. But we can attempt to discover the also the largest question of philosophy—namely in what way or ways universal principles governing the elements out of which every­ is the world intelligible? Clearly natural science is one of the most thing is composed, and of which all observable spatiotemporal , ^ important ways of revealing intelligibility. But in spite of the great ac­ complexity is a manifestation. These are the mathematically state- "7 ^ complishments of the natural sciences in their present form, it is able laws of basic physics, which describe the fundamental forces important both for science itself and for philosophy to ask how much and particles or other entities and their interactions, at least till a of what there is the physical sciences can render intelligible—how still more fundamental level is uncovered. The most systematic much of the world s intelligibility consists in its subsumability under possible description of a material universe extended in space and universal, mathematically formulable laws governing the spatiotem- time is therefore the route to the most fundamental explanation of poral order. If there are limits to the reach of science in this form, are everything. there other forms of understanding that can render intelligible what Physics and chemistry have pursued this aim with spectacular physical science does not explain? success. But the great step forward in the progress of the materialist But first we should consider the view that there are no such conception toward the ideal of completeness was the theory of limits—that physical law has the resources to explain everything, evolution, later reinforced and enriched by molecular biology and including the double relation of mind to the natural order. The in­ the discovery of DNA. Modern evolutionary theory offers a general telligibility (to us) that makes science possible is one of the things picture of how the existence and development of life could be just Y | that stand in need of explanation. The strategy is to try to extend another consequence of the equations of particle physics. Even if no the materialist world picture so that it includes such an explana­ one yet has a workable idea about the details, it is possible to specu­ tion, thereby making the physical intelligibility of the world close late that the appearance of fife was the product of chemical pro­ over itself. According to this type of naturalism, the existence of cesses governed by the laws of physics, and that evolution after that j minds to whom the world is scientifically intelligible is itself scien­ is likewise due to chemical mutations and natural selection that are tifically explicable, as a highly specific biological side effect of the also just super-complex consequences of physical principles. Even if 1 physical order. there is a residual problem of exactly how to account for conscious­ The story goes like this: There is no need for an expanded form ness in physical terms, the orthodox naturalistic view is that biology is j(^ of understanding; instead, the history of human knowledge gives in principle completely explained by physics and chemistry, and that us reason to believe that there is ultimately one way that the natural evolutionary psychology provides a rough idea of how everything order is intelligible, namely, through physical law—everything that distinctive about human life can also be regarded as an extremely exists and everything that happens can in principle be explained by complicated consequence of the behavior of physical particles in the laws that govern the physical universe. Admittedly, we can't accordance with certain fundamental laws. This will ultimately MIND AND COSMOS ANTIREDUCTIONISM AND THE NATURAL ORDER include an explanation of the cognitive capacities that enable us to discover those laws. r I find it puzzling that this view of things should be taken as more As a way of marking the boundaries of the territory in which the or less self-evident, as I believe it commonly is. Everyone acknowl­ search for such understanding must proceed, I would now like to say edges that there are vast amounts we do not know, and that enormous » something about the polar opposite of materialism, namely, the posi­ opportunities for progress in understanding lie before us. But scien­ tion that mind, rather than physical law, provides the fundamental tific naturalists claim to know what the form of that progress will be, level of explanation of everything, including the explanation of the and to know that mentalistic, teleological, or evaluative intelligibility basic and universal physical laws themselves. This view is familiarly in particular have been left behind for good as fundamental forms of expressed as theism, in its aspect as an explanation of the existence understanding. It is assumed not only that the natural order is intel­ and character of the natural world. It is the most straightforward way ligible but that its intelligibility has a certain form, being found in of reversing the materialist order of explanation, which explains mind the simplest and most unified physical laws, governing the simplest as a consequence of physical law; instead, theism makes physical law and fewest elements, from which all else follows. That is what scien­ a consequence of mind. tific optimists mean by a theory of everything. So long as the basic Considered as a response to the demand for an all-encompassing laws are not themselves necessary truths, the question remains why form of understanding, theism interprets intelligibility ultimately in those laws hold. But perhaps part of the appeal of this conception is terms of intention or purpose—resisting a purely descriptive end that if the laws are simple enough, we can come to rest with them point. At the outer bounds of the world, encompassing everything and be content to say that this is just how things are. After all, what in it, including the law-governed natural order revealed by science, is the alternative? fattM***} theism places some kind of mind or intention, which is responsible That is really my question. The implausibility of the reductive for both the physical and the mental character of the universe. So program that is needed to defend the completeness of this kind of long as the divine mind just has to be accepted as a stopping point in naturalism provides a reason for trying to think of alternatives— the pursuit of understanding, it leaves the process incomplete, just alternatives that make mind, meaning, and value as fundamental as as the purely descriptive materialist account does. matter and space-time in an account of what there is. The funda­ For either materialistic or theistic explanation to provide a com­ mental elements and laws of physics and chemistry have been plete understanding of the world, it would have to be the case that inferred to explain the behavior of the inanimate world. Something either the laws of physics, or the existence and properties of God more is needed to explain how there can be conscious, thinking and therefore of his creation, cannot conceivably be other than they ' creatures whose bodies and brains are composed of those elements. are. Physicists do not typically believe the former,2 but theists tend If we want to try to understand the world as a whole, we must start with an adequate range of data, and those data must include the I 2. Though Einstein seems to have regarded it as an open question, the question, as he put it, evident facts about ourselves. "Did God have any choice when he created the universe?" (/ ,0 MIND AND COSMOS ANTIREDUCTIONISM AND THE NATURAL ORDER / to believe the latter. This doesn't mean that a theistic world view 0yv&&\m Iso^W&owf / must be deterministic: God's essential nature may lead him to create probabilisticjaws and beings with free will, whose actions are The place at which the contrast between forms of intelligibility is explained as free choices. But some kind of divine intention would most vividly presented is in the understanding of ourselves. This is underpin the totality. also the setting for the most heated battles over what physical science The interest of theism even to an atheist is that it tries to explain can and cannot explain. Both theism and evolutionary naturalism are <** in another way what does not seem capable of explanation by phys­ attempts to understand ourselves from the outside, using very dif­ ical science. The inadequacies of the naturalistic and reductionist ferent resources. Theism offers a vicarious understanding, by assign­ world picture seem to me to be real. There are things that science as ing it to a transcendent mind whose purposes and understanding of presently conceived does not help us to understand, and which we the world we cannot ourselves fully share, but which makes it pos­ can see, from the internal features of physical science, that it is not sible to believe that the world is intelligible, even if not to us. The form going to explain. They seem to call for a more uncompromisingly of this transcendent understanding is conceived by extrapolation mentalistic or even normative form of understanding. Theism from the natural psychological self-understanding we have of our embraces that conclusion by attributing the mental phenomena own intentions. Evolutionary naturalism, by contrast, extrapolates to found within the world to the working of a comprehensive mental everything, including ourselves, a form of scientific understanding source, of which they are miniature versions. that we have developed in application to certain other parts of the However, I do not find theism any more credible than materi­ world. But the shared ambition of these two approaches, to encom­ alism as a comprehensive world view. My interest is in the territory pass ourselves in an understanding that arises from but then tran­ between them. I believe that these two radically opposed concep­ scends our own point of view, is just as important as the difference tions of ultimate intelligibility cannot exhaust the possibilities. All between them. <0 explanations come to an end somewhere. Both theism and materi­ What, if anything, justifies this common ambition of transcen­ alism say that at the ultimate level, there is one form of under­ dence ? Isn't it sufficient to try to understand ourselves from within— #0 standing. But would an alternative secular conception be possible which is hard enough? Yet the ambition appears to be irresistible—as that acknowledged mind and all that it implies, not as the expression if we cannot legitimately proceed in life just from the point of view of divine intention but as a fundamental principle of nature along that we naturally occupy in the world, but must encompass ourselves with physical law? Could it take the form of a unified conception of in a larger world view. And to succeed, that larger world view must the natural order, even if it tries to accommodate a richer set of encompass itself. materials than the austere elements of mathematical physics ? But let Any external understanding, however transcendent, begins from me first say a bit more, for dialectical purposes, about the opposi­ our own point of view (how could it not?) and is usually supposed to tion between theism and materialist naturalism and what is lacking in each of them. be consistent with the main outlines of that point of view even if it also provides a basis for significant criticism and revision as well as ,J»* MIND AND COSMOS ANTIREDUCTIONISM AND THE NATURAL ORDER

extension. With respect to human knowledge, for example, both nature and formation. The hope is not to discover a foundation that theism and naturalism try to explain how we can rely on our faculties makes our knowledge unassailably secure but to find a way of under­ to understand the world around us. At one extreme there is Des­ standing ourselves that is not radically self-undermining, and that cartes' theistic validation of perception and scientific reasoning by does not require us to deny the obvious. The aim would be to offer a the proof that God, who is responsible for our faculties, would not plausible picture of how we fit into the world. — j2/)£,6*4t\'~~ . . .

systematically deceive us. At the other extreme there is naturalized — • thJ

24 MIND AND COSMOS ANT ID cniTf L\in TUE vNATURA L ORDER

understanding is not that it offers no explanations but that it does they propose are not reassuring enough. Evolutionary naturalism not do so in the form of a comprehensive account of the natural provides an account of our capacities that undermines their reliability, — order. Theism pushes the quest for intelligibility outside the world. -A/ and in doing so undermines itself. I will have more to say about these If God exists, he is not part of the natural order but a free agent not problems of reductionism later; here let me sketch them briefly. t governed by natural laws. He may act partly by creating a natural Inevitably, when we construct a naturalistic external self- order, but whatever he does directly cannot be part of that order. understanding, we are relying on one part of our "sense-making" /*> A theistic self-understanding, for those who find it compelling capacities to create a system that will make sense of the rest. We rely on to see the world as the expression of divine intention, would leave evolutionary theory to analyze and evaluate everything from our intact our natural confidence in our cognitive faculties. But it would logical and probabilistic cognition to our moral sense. This reflects the not be the kind of understanding that explains how beings like us fit view that empirical science is the one secure, privileged form of into the world. The kind of intelligibility that would still be missing understanding and that we can trust other forms only to the extent that is intelligibility of the natural order itself—intelligibility from they can be validated through a scientific account of how and why they within. That kind of intelligibility may be compatible with some work. That still requires reliance on some of our own faculties. But forms of theism—if God creates a self-contained natural order some faculties are thought to merit more confidence than others, and which he then leaves undisturbed. But it is not compatible with even ifwe cannotprovide them with a noncircular external justification, direct theistic explanation of systematic features of the world that we must at least believe that they are not undermined by the external would seem otherwise to be brute facts—such as the creation of life account of their sources and operation that is being proposed. A core // from dead matter, or the birth of consciousness, or reason. Such of cognitive confidence must remain intact, even if some other faculties J r interventionist hypotheses amount to a denial that there is a com­ are rendered doubtful by their evolutionary pedigree. prehensive natural order. They are in part motivated by a belief that Structurally, it is still the Cartesian ideal, but with the leading seems to me correct, namely, that there is little or no possibility that role played by evolutionary theory instead of by an a priori dem­ these facts depend on nothing but the laws of physics. But another onstration of divine benevolence. But I agree with Alvin Plantinga response to this situation is to think that there may be a completely that, unlike divine benevolence, the application of evolutionary different type of systematic account of nature, one that makes these theory to the understanding of our own cognitive capacities neither brute facts that are beyond explanation nor the products of M should undermine, though it need not completely destroy, our t divine intervention. That, at any rate, is my ungrounded intellectual confidence in them.4 Mechanisms of belief formation that have se­ preference. lective advantage in the everyday struggle for existence do not warrant our confidence in the construction of theoretical accounts n The problem with naturalistic theories is different: Rather than being reassuring but insufficiently explanatory, materialist theories do of the world as a whole. I think the evolutionary hypothesis would try to make the natural order internally intelligible by explaining our place in it without reference to anything outside. But the explanations 4. Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), ch. 12.

16 MIND AND COSMOS ANTIREDUCTIONISM AND THE NATURAL ORDER

imply that though our cognitive capacities could be reliable, we do truth of propositions that seem evident on reflection should not be not have the kind of reason to rely on them that we ordinarily take shaken so easily (and, I would add, cannot be shaken on these sorts of ourselves to have in using them directly—as we do in science. In grounds without a kind of false consciousness). —

1 particular, it does not explain why we are justified in relying on It seems reasonable to run the test equally in the opposite direc­ them to correct other cognitive dispositions that lead us astray, tion: namely, to evaluate hypotheses about the universe and how we though they may be equally natural, and equally susceptible to have come into existence by reference to ordinary judgments in evolutionary explanation. The evolutionary story leaves the au­ which we have very high confidence. It is reasonable to believe that thority of reason in a much weaker position. This is even more the truth about what kind of beings we are and how the universe clearly true of our moral and other normative capacities—on which produced us is compatible with that confidence. After all, every­ we often rely to correct our instincts. I agree with Sharon Street that thing we believe, even the most far-reaching cosmological theories, an evolutionary self-understanding would almost certainly require has to be based ultimately on common sense, and on what is plainly *S us to give up moral realism—the natural conviction that our moral undeniable. The priority given to evolutionary naturalism in the judgments are true or false independent of our beliefs.5 Evolu­ face of its implausible conclusions about other subjects is due, I tionary naturalism implies that we shouldn't take any of our con­ think, to the secular consensus that this is the only form of external victions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which understanding of ourselves that provides an alternative to theism— evolutionary naturalism itself depends. which is to be rejected as a mere projection of ourintejrnal^ self- I will defend these claims in later chapters, but here let me say what conception onto the universe, without evidence. would follow if they are correct. The failure of evolutionary naturalism to provide a form of transcendent self-understanding that does not undermine our confidence in our natural faculties should not lead us 7 to abandon the search for transcendent self-understanding. There is no reason to allow our confidence in the objective truth of our moral Even if neither evolutionary naturalism nor theism provides the beliefs, or for that matter our confidence in the objective truth of our kind of comprehensive self-understanding that we are after, this mathematical or scientific reasoning, to depend on whether this is should not threaten our more direct confidence in the operation of consistent with the assumption that those capacities are the product our reason, though its appearance in the world remains a mystery. of natural selection. Given how speculative evolutionary explanations We can continue to hope for a transcendent self-understanding that of human mental faculties are, they seem too weak a ground for putting is neither theistic nor reductionist. But this also means rejecting a into question the most basic forms of thought. Our confidence in the third response to the problem that does not seem to me sustainable, though it has distinguished adherents—namely, to give up the pro­ ject of external self-understanding altogether and instead to limit 5. Sharon Street, "A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value" Philosophical Studies 127, no. i (January 2006): 109-66. ourselves to the sufficiently formidable task of understanding our

29 MIND AND COSMOS ANTIREDUCTIONISM AND THE NATURAL ORDER

point of view toward the world from within. Physical science is one Our own existence presents us with the fact that somehow the aspect of this human point of view, but it can exist side by side with world generates conscious beings capable of recognizing reasons for the other aspects, without subsuming them. This pluralistic method action and belief, distinguishing some necessary truths, and evalu­ 7 6 is what P. F. Strawson calls "descriptive metaphysics," and it has ating the evidence for alternative hypotheses about the natural much in common with Wittgenstein's antimetaphysical conception A order. We don't know how this happens, but it is hard not to believe of the proper task of philosophy. that there is some explanation of a systematic kind—an expanded But while internal understanding is certainly valuable, and an account of the order of the world. essential precondition of a more transcendent project, I don't see If we find it undeniable, as we should, that our clearest moral and how we can stop there and not seek an external conception of our­ logical reasonings are objectively valid, we are on the first rung of selves as well. To refrain we would have to believe that the quest for this ladder. It does not commit us to any particular interpretation of a single reality is an illusion, because there are many kinds of truth the normative, but I believe it demands something more. We cannot and many kinds of thought, expressed in many different forms of maintain the kind of resistance to any further explanation that is language, and they cannot be systematically combined through a sometimes called quietism. The confidence we feel within our own conception of a single world in which all truth is grounded. That is point of view demands completion by a more comprehensive view 7 as radical a claim as any of the alternatives. of our containment in the world. The question is there, whether we answer it or not. Even if we In the meantime, we go on using perception and reason to con­ conclude that the materialist account of ourselves is incomplete— struct scientific theories of the natural world even though we do not including its development through evolutionary theory—it remains have a convincing external account of why those faculties exist that the case that we are products of the long history of the universe since is consistent with our confidence in their reliability—neither a the big bang, descended from bacteria over billions of years of nat­ naturalistic account nor a Cartesian theistic one. The existence of ural selection. That is part of the true external understanding of our­ conscious minds and their access to the evident truths of ethics and selves. The question is how we can combine it with the other things mathematics are among the data that a theory of the world and our , we know—including the forms of reason on which that conclusion place in it has yet to explain. They are clearly part of what is the case, lAf I itself is based—in a world view that does not undermine itself. just as much as the data about the physical world provided by per­ ception and the conclusions of scientific reasoning about what would best explain those data. We cannot just assume that the latter 6. See P. F. Strawson, Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London: Methueri, 1959). ,Y"> 7.1 am very much in sympathy with the following statement byjaegwon Kim: "Metaphysics is category of thought has priority over the others, so that what it \"* the domain where different languages, theories, explanations, and conceptual systems come cannot explain is not real. together and have their mutual ontological relationships sorted out and clarified. That there .4 is such a common domain is the assumption of a broad and untendentious realism about Since an adequate form of self-understanding would be an alter­ jf / our cognitive activities. If you believe that there is no such common domain, well, that's " I metaphysics, too." Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental native to materialism, it would have to include mentalistic and ratio­ Causation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 66. nal elements of some kind. But my thought is that they could belong

30 MIND AND COSMOS AN TIREDUCTIONISM AND THE NATURAL ORDER

to the natural world and need not imply a transcendent individual within. That order would have to include physical law, but if life is f mind, let alone a perfect being. The inescapable fact that has to be not just a physical phenomenon, the origin and evolution of life and accommodated in any complete conception of the universe is that mind will not be explainable by physics and chemistry alone. An X the appearance of living organisms has eventually given rise to con­ expanded, but still unified, form of explanation will be needed, and sciousness, perception, desire, action, and the formation of both I suspect it will have to include ideological elements. .^z^rfH**^- I beliefs and intentions on the basis of reasons. If all this has a natural All that can be done at this stage in the history of science is to argue for recognition of the problem, not to offer solutions. But /\x explanation, the possibilities were inherent in the universe long before there was life, and inherent in early life long before the I want to take up some of the obstacles to reduction, and their con­ A/ appearance of animals. A satisfying explanation would show that sequences, in more detail, beginning with the dearest case. the realization of these possibilities was not vanishingly improbable but a significant likelihood given the laws of nature and the compo­ sition of the universe. It would reveal mind and reason as basic s^ ^*W^^, /kprtwJrftrtJ aspects of a nonmaterialistic natural order. U^L^U.***"' This is not just anthropocentric triumphalism. The entire animal kingdom, the endless generations of insects and spiders in their enormous, extravagant populations, all pose this same question about the order of nature. We have not observed life anywhere but on earth, but no natural fact is cosmologically more significant. However much we come to understand, as we are in the process of doing, the chemical basis of life and of its evolution, the phenom­ enon still calls for a greatly expanded basis for intelligibility. To sum up: the respective inadequacies of materialism and theism as transcendent conceptions, and the impossibility of abandoning the search for a transcendent view of our place in the universe, lead to the hope for an expanded but still naturalistic understanding that avoids psychophysical reductionism. The essential character of such an understanding would be to explain the appearance of life, con­ sciousness, reason, and knowledge neither as accidental side effects of the physical laws of nature nor as the result of intentional inter­ vention in nature from without but as an unsurprising if not inevi­ table consequence of the order that governs the natural world from

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